Tuesday, 14 June 2011

Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery

While on our road trip we visited this unbelievable site called Carrowmore Cemetery in County Sligo - a cemetery that is 5,400 years old.

It is one of the four main passage tomb sites in Ireland, on a par with the better known Newgrange complex in County Meath, and I can't believe that I had never known of its existence before.

There are around 30 visible structures, mostly dolmen circles, that is a small dolmen enclosed by a boulder ring of 12 to 15 metres, and while none of these burial chamber structures are quite as impressive as those as Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, the sheer number of structures makes this a very special place to visit.

The picture above shows Maeve's cairn or Listoghil on the nearby Knocknarea and many of the Carrowmore dolmens appear to be aligned to the cairn.

Being a stone-hugging hippy. The wire-caged cairn surrounding this dolmen seems quite an incongruous structure but I suppose it allows people to access the dolmen which presumably was originally covered in stones.